Online Property Storage Marketplace Adopts XRP Payment

On-demand property storage and rental marketplace Omni has announced the addition of Ripple as a payment method after raising $25 million in XRP during a Series B funding round in January.

Explaining the company’s latest move to adopt XRP payments in a recent interview with TechCrunch, Omni founder and CEO Tom McLeod asserted that all companies should be prepared to have a crypto strategy for the future, stating that:

“I think any company scaling today has to have a crypto strategy. This is the start of ours.”

To that end, Omni is now allowing users to get paid in XRP when they rent their items to fellow Omni users while still providing the option to cash out in USD.

Omni was originally billed as a more efficient and cost-effective alternative to item storage compared to traditional storage methods such as storage unit rentals. When a user needs to store an item, a company representative is sent over to fetch the item, photograph it, and transfer it to a massive storage facility, a method that has been proven to be far more inexpensive compared to having to rent an entire storage for a single item.

As further explained in the report, if a user needs a particular item back, a request for delivery to their residence can be sent 24/7 and can be received within hours. In addition to its existing service, the company has also launched MarketPlace, a new feature that allows users to rent out their unused property, generating side profit as a result.

While users looking to rent their unused items are required to itemize the properties rather than grouping them into a single container, those looking to offload and rent out items grouped in a much larger container are required to pay twice as much storage fee, while generating the same rental profit from the contained group of items.

As McLeod explained:

“Marketplace is driving Omni growth, and has always been the core of the long-term vision. Closed containers don’t grow the business, but move almost as much. We’re basically the same price as competitors now for them. It also makes it potentially more likely that small items will be itemized. We’re going to launch kits/playlists that will allow for grouping in the coming months.”

Currently, Omni’s services are available in San Francisco and Portland, with plans to expand to more cities in the next several months.

On top of adopting XRP payment, both the company and its users can also generate profit in cryptocurrency. While users can grow their investment portfolio and unlock liquidity in their items, the company can minimize their transaction charges that they are prompted to settle when users cash out and transfer USD.

“In every other crypto investment scenario, you have to risk your cash — this way you can put items you already own to work for you and have them earn XRP while you relax. With this integration, you can basically double dip on ownership-as-investment by both unlocking liquidity early and investing some or all of the proceeds back into the crypto markets.”